Investigating Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners’ Development of Intercultural Communicative Competence in the New Zealand Secondary School Context

Abstract

Developing students’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through foreign language education is significant in a globalised world (Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2016; Dervin, 2010; Fantini, 2006; Sercu, 2002). Most research on the development of ICC has been conducted at the tertiary level and from teachers’ perspectives; however, little is known about school-aged students’ ICC development. Most studies have used surveys, interviews, and reflective tasks to investigate students’ ICC development, but the combination of different data collection tools is scarce. In the New Zealand context, the Ministry of Education (2007) has established the development of ICC as one of the objectives for language learning and teaching. Nevertheless, implementing an intercultural approach for foreign language teachers in the New Zealand context is still preliminary and immature (Tolosa et al., 2018). Notably, teachers claimed they lacked support, especially appropriate tools to enhance students’ ICC (Scarino, 2010). Furthermore, with the increasing number of students in New Zealand studying Chinese, little empirical research has been conducted to investigate Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners’ ICC development. To fill these gaps, this study focuses on investigating the development of CFL learners’ ICC with classroom pedagogical tools in the New Zealand secondary school context. Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory and Byram’s (1997) ICC framework, this study adopted a multiple case study design with an intervention in each case to investigate the roles of different pedagogical tools in CFL learners’ ICC development over three school terms. The teachers from the three secondary schools respectively conducted the intervention by implementing three pedagogical tools: role-plays, cultural artefacts, and videos, combined with reflective tasks. Forty-two CFL learners from three teachers’ classrooms participated in the intervention. To investigate students’ ICC development, the researcher collected qualitative data from their interviews, surveys, and reflective tasks. Based on Byram’s ICC framework, the data gathered were triangulated and thematically analysed. The findings of this study revealed that students demonstrated an overall complex ICC developmental process, and such development was holistic, multidimensional, and nonlinear. Specifically, the findings showed that students’ ICC was developed in all the four ICC dimensions: attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical cultural awareness, and such development was different across the four dimensions and the three cases. Besides, the findings suggested that different ICC pedagogical tools had distinctive advantages in mediating specific ICC components. These mediational tools can play an important part in intercultural language teaching and learning. Furthermore, this study suggested that implementing ICC pedagogical tools with a reflective stance appeared to give a voice to students, and the reflection might mediate their ICC development as well. Overall, this study foregrounds students’ voices through the use of mediational tools in intercultural language teaching and learning. The current study provides theoretical and pedagogical insights into developing CFL learners’ ICC at the secondary school level. Theoretically, this study broadens the understanding of ICC by presenting a detailed and holistic picture of the process of students’ ICC development over time. It provides new knowledge about ICC development situated in the CFL learning context. Pedagogically, this study supports teachers in developing students’ ICC through implementing ICC pedagogical tools with a reflective stance in the CFL classroom. In brief, the implementation of ICC pedagogical tools in the current study might shed light on mediating students’ ICC development in foreign language education.